


I can help you, you know.

by Leafpool2



Series: Gang!Warriors AU [1]
Category: The LEGO Movie (2014), Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: F/M, Gang!Warriors AU, grittyverse-ish, humanization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-16 01:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2250459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leafpool2/pseuds/Leafpool2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a new police chief transfers to town and makes the Clans his target Brightheart expects the worst. What she doesn't expect is to find is someone so scarily like herself.</p><p>She didn't think he'd need her help either.</p><p>(dumb fic for a crackship, GCBC are still not fully healed, give it a shot if you want to)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScribbleTheCalico](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribbleTheCalico/gifts).



> Alright, so this was written mostly by an accidental bit of inspiration. I had just thought "What if Grittyverse Good Cop Bad Cop with the horrible acid burns all over one half of their face met Brightheart, the cat who got her face ripped off by dogs?" Then my friend Ix and I started talking about it and we accidentally had the basic plot of a fic where they meet and help each other heal.
> 
> So yes, everything that happened in the books before this has happened, Bluestar had one of the scariest mental breakdowns I've ever seen (and I watch Hannibal) named Brightheart Lostface after she lost half her face and an eye to dogs, then Firestar held the ceremony where he changed her name to Brightheart. Which means that timeline-wise, this takes place probably in between The Darkest Hour and Midnight, For the sake of the crack-fic We'll pretend Cloudtail helped her learn to fight and still be a warrior but they never become mates.
> 
> And I'll say this is about a year and a half after the end of the Lego Movie. The Cops just moved, Bricksburg got to be too much for them.
> 
> For the record. I'm writing a longer series of fics in the Gang AU. Cloudtail and Brightheart get together like in the books there, but this is an AU of that AU. I do what I want here. I'm writing it for me and I don't expect anyone to go nuts over it. But hey if somebody likes it that's great and welcome aboard this silly, silly, ship.

The day for Brightheart had begun like most others. Cloudtail had peeked through her door while she was making her breakfast but where he usually flopped into one of the chairs he stayed in the door.

"Brightheart, you heard about the meeting in the Great Room?"  
"No, thanks for telling me Cloudtail. I'll head over there when I have my toast."

Once her food was ready and she had her toast and coffee Cloudtail linked his arm with hers "You want me to guide you there? I know you're too helpless to make it on your own." He said jokingly only to be met with a light punch to the arm from Brightheart.

"Hey, just thought I'd be realistic here."  
"Realistic my ass you moron,"  
"Well of course, the ThunderClan members who think you're as helpless as that are in for a nasty surprise. You're welcome for that help by the way."  
"Okay, thank you my dear savior without whom I would be hopeless and not know how to cope with my blind spot."  
"I was kidding, no need to snark at me."  
"I know. Let's go to the Great Room, wouldn't want to be late for the meeting." Brightheart said as she led her friend out of the apartment.

_____

The Great Room was, in truth, not all that great. It was just an old conference room that had seen better days, but it was the only room large enough to fit the entire Clan. When all it's members had finally arrived Firestar walked to front of the room.

"I'm sure you all want to know why I've called this meeting. Well, I'll get straight to the point, there's a new head of Police in town. He has what seems to be a clean record impossible for somebody as highly ranked as him. Reports from the precinct make it seem like he's aiming for the Clans. I don't know what he has coming, but I think it would be safe to expect the worst."

At this a slew of shocked murmuring broke out in the room.

"Badgers, am I right?" Cloudtail whispered, to Brightheart. They both broke into a fit of giggles and didn't hear one of their Clanmates' complaints about how to keep safe.

Firestar hesitated. "At this point, I really don't know much that I couldn't have said about the previous head of police. Please, remain calm. He hasn't done anything different yet, and he hasn't even been seen much."  
"I bet he's never had a job with this much power before, he'll be abusing it in our direction soon enough!" Cloudtail shouted out above the noise "Cloudtail, we'll honestly just have to wait and see. This meeting is over, if you have more questions, come to me in my apartment." And as Firestar left the other members of the Clan filed out and went out to perform their own tasks.

Brightheart on the other hand, out of concern for herself and her Clan went to the library to do a bit of research on this new Police Chief. There must be something to his flawless past.

The walk to the library was a long one, as Brightheart had been so absorbed in her thoughts she had accidentally taken the long way around. She also didn't notice she had bumped into someone until she found herself sitting on the ground.

"Oh my, I'm so sorry. I just wasn't paying attention." She quickly pulled herself up to face this person and when she finally looked at him she paused. _Oh My StarClan…his face…_

"Not to worry lass, it happens to the best of us."  
"I'm…glad you understand" she said quietly while staring intently at the damaged part of the man's face.  
"Sorry, I know it's a bit scary. Thought you could handle it better than most."  
"No…it's just…I never thought I'd meet someone in the same boat. I never even thought there _was_ a boat."  
"Well, I suppose there is now, and there's at least two people in it. Just out of curiosity what's your name?"  
"Alina, you?"  
"Liam…Well Alina, have a nice day." He gave a small smile and started to walk off  
"No, wait" she called out, not sure why "Maybe we could talk at some point?" Liam looked at her with no expression, almost as if the suggestion was confusing to him.

Brightheart fished a pen and small paper out of her pants pocket and wrote down her phone number. She wasn't sure why she felt so confident trusting this stranger with the information, if asked she would never say. They only had scars in common as far as she knew. "…thank you. I suppose we'll talk later then?" Brightheart beamed at him happily.

"Yes, I suppose so, I'm glad." And he finally walked off to wherever he had been heading while Brightheart walked to the library Once she made it she headed straight for the computers and starting searching for this mysterious police chief. It took her some time, she sorted through a lot of articles about police cracking down on the gangs. She even found a few things on protest sites about her accident, and how justice had to be served for the police doing nothing about it.

_Two hours of searching and still not even a picture of the guy. Whoever he is, he's good._

About an hour later she finally got a lead, it was just some conspiracy website ranting about this guy running a crazy police state while hunting down "master builders" she giggled as she imagined a police officer chasing all the best architects and construction workers out of town. Until she reached the bottom of the page and her stomach dropped. There at the bottom of the page was a very blurry picture of Liam, his hand was up in an attempt to hide his face from the camera and it was obvious he was visibly angry at the person taking it. The only difference between the man she had seen and this picture was that he was wearing a uniform and the left side of his face glared back at her, undamaged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heh heh I'm just gonna leave this here. If there's any glaring characterization errors please do tell me! Or if you maybe liked it leave a comment? Or say why you didn't so I know how to improve!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha ha, that took longer than I thought it would, this is one of those fics where I know exactly what I want to do and where it should go. Only problem is I'm just writing whenever I can and some of the spaces in between major plot points are just ?????? I've got no idea how to write them, hence the awkwardness of this chapter.
> 
> I don't even really have an excuse for how long this took I've just been so lazy.
> 
> Also I like headcanon that Good and Bad use different emoticons so people can tell who's texting them, I can't remember who came up with it but I'm using it.  
> B( = Bad  
> 8D = Good (and yes he is here, he's just not shown up yet)

Brightheart printed out a copy of the site with Liam's picture on one of the free printers and ran back to her apartment, upon her arrival she found Cloudtail sprawled out on her couch watching Game of Thrones on her TV.

"Hey, you have your own TV, you know that right?"  
"Yeah, but I don't have the comfiest couch in the Clan, courtesy of Firestar."  
"He's _your_ uncle not mine, couldn't you mooch off him and say it's because he's family?"  
"Nah, this is easier, you don't kick me out."  
"I could start." she sighed "but whatever, I'm not having this conversation now. I've got news. Guess who I ran into walking to the library this morning?"  
"Mistyfoot? I never talked to her because she's a higher rank than a young warrior like me but she always seemed cool. Why was she going to the library?"  
"No, I didn't meet Mistyfoot, I met our newest chief of police, literally ran into him."  
"You headbutteded a _cop_?"  
"No! I bumped into him on the walk over. I also found a picture of him after a couple hours of searching at the library. He really hates getting his picture taken and he's good at avoiding the camera, but not quite good enough." 

she tossed the print-out at Cloudtail and moved his feet so she could sit on her couch "Also that picture's old, something happened to him since, when I saw him he was just the same as me."  
"He's a cop, you're in a gang" Cloudtail retorted  
"No, I mean, you see my face right? 'Course you do, everyone does, his is the same, it's all ripped off and burned and he's got one eye socket that's all empty and useless. Only difference is that his scars are on the right side of his face and mine are on my left and he hides a lot of it with sunglasses. Also I may have…given him my number…"  
"YOU WHAT?"  
"He…he was in civilian clothes, I thought he was just a guy. I don't know why I did that…he just seemed…trustworthy?"  
"Go, talk to Firestar go. You might be able to use this to your advantage. You could get info on what the cops're doing and tell us so we can be a step ahead!" At that Cloudtail pushed Brightheart out of her own apartment and toward the stairs up to get to Firestar's penthouse.

She sighed and walked slowly up the stairs _Damn, I don't want to explain this to Firestar. I don't even know what to say. Hey I met a cop and we're sort of friends now I think, oops!_

 

she arrived to the door and tried to delay the inevitable but he must have heard her footsteps and his head poked out. "Hello Brightheart, what seems to be troubling you? No, I'm sorry, please do come in." He fully opened the door and gestured to her to come in. As she looked around she couldn't help but notice that a lot of Bluestar's things were still lying about in the living room. She supposed that between BloodClan and that trip he and Sandstorm had taken a few moons back Firestar hadn't had much time to fully move his own stuff in. Firestar stayed standing but allowed Brightheart to sit in one of Bluestar's worn armchairs. "Now," Firestar continued "What is the problem? I assume it's about the new Police Chief, just please don't yell at me I've had enough people do that in the past three hours."

"Well, I met him. He was in civilian clothes and he…was…like me you know? The right side of his face was gone just like mine, and he seemed trustworthy and I gave him my phone number, and he gave me his. Will, anyway." she paused when she felt her phone vibrate, it was a text from Liam. Which she showed Firestar, "Told you."  
"Perhaps…we could use this, would you be…okay with talking to him more? I know cops bode poorly for you since they refused to stop the Dogs attacking you and Swiftpaw. You could just pretend you lost your phone."  
"No. I can handle it."  
"You're willing to keep me up to date on what is planned against ThunderClan?"   
"Yes."   
"Good. This should be okay then. This will be a great help. Thank you." Seeing that Firestar's gratitude was genuine Brightheart decided to leave.  
"It's nothing really. Bye Firestar."

 

She finally actually read the text Liam had sent when she got out _Hi, it's Liam, thought you'd like to get coffee. It's easier than a meal as you can leave whenever you want. Have time? B(  
_ _Sure, meet at The Coffee Bean in an hour? It's close to me and I'm not sure where you live, but you have car I'm guessing. I don't. Also what's with the frowny face?  
_ _Sounds okay, and yes I do. Thanks._ He didn't answer the last question she had asked. Maybe he was just unhappy, but he hadn't seemed ruthless enough to be like the man that old article was so terrified of.

____

At a quarter to five Brightheart arrived in The Coffee Bean. Ten minutes early but she assumed that earliness couldn't hurt a developing friendship. She almost felt bad for lying to the guy but he wanted to get rid of her Clan, she didn't have a lot of options.

She stared at the menu and pondered weather she should get her usual coffee or try something else and as she did an unmarked police car pulled up to the curb and Liam stepped out (in uniform) to put quarters in the parking meter. Once he had entered Brightheart ran to greet him.

"Hi again!"  
"Alina," he nodded curtly and quickly surveyed the place, Brightheart hadn't noticed he was on edge until he stopped looking at all the patrons and evaluating them and lowered his shoulders in calm. She wasn't sure if it was his being a cop or whatever had happened to him to get those scars.  
"Don't worry, pretty much all the regulars here know each other. If anything happened in here we'd get help."  
"What would happen here?" Liam tensed again.  
"Oh, sorry buddy," Liam flinched, "nothing would happen more than likely. I just…you know, if some crazy guy with a gun showed up and there wasn't a cop here."   
"Right…of course." he relaxed, "Well, we came for coffee. I assume you know what you want so go ahead and order." Alina nodded and ordered a small iced coffee and once it arrived she proceeded to pour in multiple spoonfuls of sugar. Liam had ordered an americano espresso and watched her pour in sugar curiously. "Bit of a sweet tooth there?"  
"A bit," she laughed and walked over to a table in the corner "black coffee always tasted bad to me."  
"Well, I've never been a fan of sugary things. I have a brother though, he'll eat all the sugar in sight if you let him."  
"Oh I know how that is. I've got a friend, Tom, who's even worse than me. I swear sometimes he'll just take a cup and pour solid sugar into it and eat it. I've never seen it but I can probably prove it if I try." Liam laughed at this

The two talked on about themselves for almost two hours, the coffee shop had emptied out and only them and a couple who had gotten lost were still in the store. Brightheart almost was disappointed by how easy the conversations between them had been. Liam was very closed off and preferred listening to talking but he had some interesting stories about his old city he had been okay with sharing with Brightheart and all the while a pit was building in Brightheart's stomach because she was using him. He was an enemy to her way of life, but dammit she couldn't bring herself to hate him. They finally left and Liam wished her a good night even if she felt she shouldn't have one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee sort-of Friendships!
> 
> So the thing about the city the Gangs are in is it's like...psuedo-Chicago? Not to offend anyone from there I just know there's lots of gangs there. So the apartment complex of ThunderClan and the places all the other clans live in are based on places I've found online (never been to, I don't live anywhere near there and I can't very well fly out and look for the places on a whim so online info and google maps will have to be enough) The coffee place is not real though, I made it up because the place where I pretend ThunderClan kind of took over the building has no coffee shop nearby but I needed one.
> 
> That's about that until the next chapter, if something needs clarifying or there's anything that seems out of character for anybody let me know and I can fix it!  
> Show don't tell is a thing I am working on but I may have just been confusing while thinking I was doing it so...


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this starts with a bit of a time skip. It's lame I know, sorry. But we get to hear from Liam this chapter! Aiden's going to show up later but like I said Liam's real protective of him after Takos Tuesday. I've got his role in this all plotted out and it'll probably be next chapter that he finally shows himself, that one's going to be more Cop-Centric.
> 
> It's fun to dig into the Cops' head though, I'm mostly putting their POV to show the contrast between the two. If that makes sense, there's a better way of wording this explanation I'm sure, anyway. Chapter start!

After several months of hanging out with Liam, Brightheart decided that if he was invited into her apartment he wouldn't try anything. She was actually enjoying his company, and was sad to learn he had hardly seen any good movies, she had asked him if he had ever wanted to have the power of RoboCop but none of the corruption and he had looked at her confused simply muttering " _never seen Robocop"_ and something else she didn't hear. As soon as she heard this she had insisted that he come to her apartment so she could catch him up on the good movies of the past several years he'd ignored.

____

Liam had come to enjoy Alina's company, the past several months they had spent together had been quite peaceful. By a pleasant coincidence work in the precinct had been pretty light, he had some officers out in the field looking for more information about the gangs but they had been pretty quiet. Not fighting amongst themselves or causing any trouble for civilians. There wasn't even a hint they were plotting something, it was strange how peaceful they were being. In the interim he had done some research and read up on some of the information the internet had but that their own archives didn't. They called themselves Clans, they were obsessed with the earth but the photos of many of the Gang members that were in the archives, and the ones he had seen in prison didn't look like a lot of the other unwashed hippies protesting out on the street. The Clans seemed to hate those people as much as the police. "They don't stand for anything" said one in a newspaper article. Though Liam had yet to guess what these "Clans" stood for. He'd asked Alina some things to see what she knew but didn't give him any more information than what he had been able to find.

Due to the lack of gang activity occurring now he had been able to spend a lot of his off-time with Alina, it had been quite nice. He'd also met Tom, Alina's friend who had helped her when she was injured. "She was attacked by some of those assholes from the gangs. We don't know which one. It's good one of her coworkers found her by accident and managed to get her help." Tom wouldn't say much else, understandably his best friend being hurt was a touchy subject. Liam was already supposed to be trying to get rid of the gangs and hearing this made him hate them just a little more. He wasn't sure where he stood with Alina but he considered her a friend. He tried to keep a good amount of distance from her though, he would hate her to be a target again because he was around but then he had been dragged to her apartment for a movie night. They ended up watching Robocop, which thankfully beared no resemblance to the Super Secret Police robot force he had in Bricksburg. Still, he found it hard to sit through, and then Alina switched it out for a slightly more lighthearted movie. Some semi romance movie that didn't seem to take itself too seriously. At one point a very fake giant rat launched itself at the lead man. It never got too unbearable, which was nice. Then at his suggestion they ended up watching Star Wars, as he had always held fond memories of those movies. Movie nights with his parents had been a struggle because he and Aiden had both had different tastes in movies but they could always agree on Star Wars. So Alina put in Empire Strikes Back and at some point, he fell asleep.

When he woke up he was still on the couch with a lot of pillows and covered by a couple blankets, and he saw Alina making something in her small kitchen. "Oh hey, good morning. Want an omelette?" Liam nodded and sat in one of her chairs by the counter.

"Just a plain one thanks." he said, and at this she set down a plate in front of him.   
"I guessed, you eat really boring sometimes. Now give me a second I'm making a western omelette for me." Once she had finished she sat across from him and ate her omelette very quickly. Liam had only eaten half of his (she had added some cheese in to make it less "boring", he had to admit it made it better) and Alina looked over at him, "So was the movie night okay?" he nodded  
"Yes, it was quite good. What was the name of that movie with the giant rat?"  
"It's a Rodent of Unusual Size, and the movie was the Princess Bride. Great right?"  
"Yes, which I wasn't expecting. Maybe we could do this again? A movie night I mean. Plan ahead and make a night of it, and maybe not have it end with me falling asleep on your couch?"  
"You say that like you were in the way or something, it's totally cool, I get it. Tom's done that before too. He's so boring to watch movies with, he falls asleep right at the best parts and I have to _constantly_ make sure he's awake! Hey, you wanna get lunch later?"  
"I uh…should probably go, I've taken up a lot of your time already."  
"Come on! It'll be fun, maybe I could bring Tom so we can look like bros and the waitstaff won't keep asking us presumptive couple-y questions like that italian place."  
"I didn't like those people."  
"Me neither, so you want to go? I'll text Tom and maybe Frank if that's cool with you."  
"Frank?"  
"Oh, I forgot to tell you about him. He's a co-worker. He's pretty cool."  
"Fine by me. So long as they don't assume a backstory for us."  
"Yay! I'll call him." and she went into her room to call the two and came out after about ten minutes  
"Wanna watch another movie? We can probably get through another one before lunchtime rolls around." Liam considered it for a short moment.  
"Sure."  
"Great, what do you want to watch? Look through the shelf and pull something out." eventually he ended up settling on The Shining. Alina seemed glad to tell him all the making-of trivia she knew and he was glad to listen. 

____

After talking off poor Liam's ear throughout the movie, (and promptly apologizing for said and telling him he could ask her to stop any time) they finished the movie up and Brightheart had Liam follow her to Tom's and Frank's apartments and they all walked to Liam's car and went around until they found themselves at a Chili's, fortunately it was very quiet and they were able to get a full-sized table and chat throughout their meal. Liam seemed to not be on edge, which was nice considering that Firestar was new to him and he had some anxiety when it came to new people, Liam had told her it was a recent development, he still wouldn't say much about what happened to him to get his scars but she had to guess that played a major part. Firestar had done well to keep his cool around Liam as well, thankfully she hadn't been lying about him being a co-worker. He was actually her boss at a consignment store. She mostly stayed in the back and sorted through donations to find their value and sometimes would deal with the people donating things.

She told a story about how at one point she'd had to deal with a women who brought in a bunch of old Barbie dolls and was outraged Alina had marked all of them at twelve dollars, then forced her to look up each doll individually to see real price. Yelling all the while about how these were classic dolls and were only to go to real collectors. Brightheart had refused to change the price and reminded the woman it was a consignment store not a pawn shop. And then the woman had asked to see her manager, which was Firestar and she yelled at him about how Brightheart should be fired for being so disrespectful. When she had finished Firestar gave her all the dolls back and led her out.

It ended up being quite enjoyable, everyone behaved themselves, and Brightheart, Cloudtail, and Firestar all were dropped of by Liam in their apartment complex, in the elevator Cloudtail let out a sigh of relief "So glad to be a Clan member again, your friend makes me nervous Bright." she punched him lightly on the arm and told him to shut up, and when she finally returned to her own apartment she let out a sigh of relief and began to clean up her apartment. _Alina you are so doomed. How are you starting to fall for Liam? Of all people on the planet it has to be him, StarClan help me._

After moping around for quite some time she decided to go visit Cinderpelt, surely the Clan's healer could give her some good advice, she had been really helpful when Brightheart was recovering from the Dogs' attack. So she went and knocked on her door down the hall and was promptly greeted by Cinderpelt in her pajamas.

"Hey, do you need something?  
"Just advice,"  
"Oh thank goodness, I don't think I'd be able to treat any injuries right now, too tired for that."  
"Long shift?"  
"Yeah, anyway, come in, I'm not totally useless right now."

 

Brightheart was lead into Cinderpelt's other room with her medicine and sat Brightheart down at a small table which she sat on the other side of. It had become her treatment and consultation room, and she usually kept some trundle beds and small things like puzzles and stress toys in this room, Brightheart remembered throwing them against the wall on her lower days, when she was too angry about her injury. "So," Cinderpelt started "What seems to be the problem?"

"Well, for the past little while now I've been hanging out with Liam, and I don't know, he's really nice, and I actually really like being around him, but he's a cop, but… _I think I'm starting to have a crush on him._ " The last part she blurted out quickly while she still had the nerve.  
"Oh, oh my, Brightheart…I…I want to be glad you've found somebody who works with you…but he's the chief of police. You would have to tell him about the Clan eventually."  
"I know! I thought you could give me some advice, how do I make it go away?"  
"I don't know, Perhaps tomorrow we could go to consult StarClan, they know more than I, and perhaps Bluestar could give you advice."  
"Okay Cinder, do you have a shift tomorrow?"  
"No."  
"I have work but I can use one of my sick days."  
"Great, I'll meet you at six, and we can head to the moonstone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah! We're moving along now! 
> 
> Just for the record, Frank is Firestar and Tom is Cloudtail And Cinderpelt's an actual nurse. Pretty much everybody in the Clan has a job. They're a little more responsible and organized like that. They don't really pay rent though. ThunderClan is taking up every apartment in the building and they mostly use intimidation and the person who owns the building kind of just has to go with it. That's more in line with a gang I think.
> 
> And that story about the Barbies in the consignment store? That's based on a real story my sister told me about working in a kid's consignment store. Except replace fellow gang member as the manger with family friend. I know I shouldn't do things like that but I couldn't pass up the chance.
> 
> If there's any character flaws or things that seem odd please let me know! Thanks!


End file.
